


you are the sweetest infection

by gealbhan



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Common Cold, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, Love Confessions, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-11-07 05:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17954633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: “I’m a med student, and you’re my best friend,” says Jester, slow but not condescending. Beau’s brain, currently as solid as pudding, appreciates it. “So it’s my duty to nurse you back to health when you’re sick, okay?”“I don’t think that’s how that works,” says Beau, but it’s a weak excuse for a protest.“Nope, I’ve already decided.” Jester lays a hand over her chest and says, voice booming slightly (loud enough that Beau winces), “I’ll take care of you, Beau! What else are friends for?”Beau shuts her eyes and regrets everything. “Yeah, friends.”





	you are the sweetest infection

**Author's Note:**

> at the beginning of this month, i came down with the first cold i'd gotten in 4+ years and felt like i was dying for like 5 days straight and thus decided to project all of my feelings onto beau. i am no longer sick but i was legally obligated to finish this so... here we are
> 
> title is from "between the breaths" by mitski & xiu xiu. enjoy!

Beau wakes up feeling, in short, like she’s just been run over by a truck. Multiple times. And then another time, like, an hour later when the driver decided they hadn’t had enough of her yet.

As soon as her eyes open, she wants to shut them again. There’s a rawness to the edges of her eyes, a wateriness that’s not just from her gentle yawn, which also makes her throat burn in a way that Beau, whose pain threshold is higher than it probably should be, winces and clutches her neck at. Her stuffy nose makes a pathetic squeaking sound when she tries to inhale. A gross taste fills her throat and creeps up into the back of her mouth.

She rubs her eyes to at least attempt to make them hurt less. (It doesn’t work.) She takes in a breath through her mouth and focuses her gaze on the digital clock across the room, where she’d kept it even after she started keeping alarms on her phone because she thought she’d try to crush her clock out of habit anyway. In bright red that makes her head throb, the clock cheerfully tells her, _11:39_.

Fuck. Beau feels like she’s forgetting something, but the haze over her mind is so all-consuming that she brushes it off.

Instead, she shivers and tugs the blankets further up around her, letting them fall around her neck. She’d cranked the heat up last night, hadn’t she? She’s definitely not feeling it now, a chill going deep into her bones. She wraps herself up in all the blankets on her bed (not many) and decides it’ll have to do. She doesn’t think she can even get up to search for more layers.

Okay, Beau tells herself, trying to think back to the last time she got sick and coming up with _literally five years ago_. She can handle this, though. She’s got some non-drowsy cold medicine somewhere in her mess of a medicine cabinet, given to her by Jester at one point when she discovered how little medicine Beau had on hand and forced her into the nearest Walgreens, so she can take that, and—

And the front door clicks open, slamming the brakes on her thoughts.

Beau’s already-chilled blood goes ice cold. Of course the one time someone decides to break and enter, she’s feeling like she’s going to collapse and turn into an icicle and then melt on her bedroom floor if she even sits up. She flings her blankets off, tries not to shiver, fails, and balls her fists. Her eyes fall shut.

This is fine, she thinks, beginning to accept her fate as she waits.

“Beau, are you okay? Where are you?” she hears from the front room, the familiar accented voice tinged with worry as it rings through Beau’s apartment.

Relief, something Beau never thought she’d feel in relation to her questionable-in-retrospect decision to give Jester a key to her apartment, washes over her entire body. She unclenches her fists with a sigh. She doesn’t know why Jester’s here, but she _does_ know that she’s glad she’s not a robber or murderer or anything like that. Beau collapses onto her mattress and pulls her blankets up again.

“Beau?” she hears again.

“Bedroom,” yells Beau with all her might, voice cracking with the effort. She internally screams at the ensuing throat pain.

Jester appears in the doorway like a bright blue specter, eyes wide and hand running up and down in a nervous pattern along the strap of her purse. She’s wearing dressy clothes, Beau notes—a button-up tucked into a dark blue poodle skirt and kitten heels. It looks stunning on her (as would a burlap sack, though), but it makes Beau frown. Had she been going somewhere?

“Hey,” she manages under a cough. Jester’s face only grows more worried. “What’re you doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but—”

“You didn’t show up for breakfast, and you didn’t text or anything either,” says Jester, rubbing her neck, “so I just decided to come check on you.”

Beau’s eyes widen as she resists the urge to slap herself on the forehead. _That’s_ what she’d been forgetting. They’d had plans to get breakfast at a local diner (Jester paying, because Beau loves Jester—if maybe not in the way Jester thinks—but she doesn’t have enough to pay for the amount of treats Jester buys, whereas Jester has more than enough for the both of them), then go to the gym. Beau suspects Jester would have had to change before the latter half of their plans, though. Jester, being Jester, would rock the dress shirt and skirt, but the heels might be more detrimental.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I just woke up.” Beau rubs her forehead, guilt filling her entire body. Oh, wait, that’s just physical pain. “And I feel like total shit, so I’m gonna have to take a rain check. Sorry, Jes,” she repeats, biting her lip. “I really was looking forward to it.”

Her words fade away into a crunchy cough, which itself spurs on a series of loud and phlegmy coughs that make Beau’s throat ache. Once she thinks she’s done, she checks her hand to make sure there’s no discolored liquids or anything else she doesn’t want to be coughing up. (Beau doesn’t want to be coughing at all, naturally, but she _does_ pay attention when Jester talks about illnesses. Which has been a lot as of late, given it’s cold season.) Her fist is slick with spit, but nothing else. She sighs with relief.

Jester, who’s been hovering in the doorway in silence the whole time, steps closer, frowning. “You poor thing,” she says, stroking Beau’s forehead. “I guess I’ll just have you be your nurse.”

Beau’s thoughts short circuit. “Huh?”

Jester squeezes her cheeks—Beau finds that she’s much more compliant like this, which she doesn’t want Jester to find out but is pretty sure Jester already knows from the little gleam in her eyes. “I’m a med student, and you’re my best friend,” says Jester, slow but not condescending. Beau’s brain, currently as solid as pudding, appreciates it. “So it’s my duty to nurse you back to health when you’re sick, okay?”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” says Beau, but it’s a weak excuse for a protest.

“Nope, I’ve already decided.” Jester lays a hand over her chest and says, voice booming slightly (loud enough that Beau winces), “I’ll take care of you, Beau! What else are friends for?”

Beau shuts her eyes and regrets everything. “Yeah, friends.”

+

After her Thaumaturgy-ified proclamation, Jester lets Beau go back to sleep, which both parties involved will agree is the best decision. Beau comes back into consciousness, less drowsy but with as much pain in her throat as before, to find that Jester’s pulled up a chair at her bedside.

Beau vaguely recognizes the chair from her own living room, but she doesn’t think she’s ever used it. She’s pretty sure it was a housewarming gift from her parents and she assumed it had a built-in whoopee cushion or spikes that shout out and impaled its user when someone sat down or something else nefarious. That, it seems, isn’t the case, because Jester looks content as can be, scrolling through her phone and humming. Beau manages a throat clear, which makes Jester lift her head.

“Good morning, Sleeping _Beau_ -ty,” she chirps, despite the fact that both of them know it isn’t anything close to morning anymore. Beau glances at the clock—about an hour and a half has passed.

“You’re still here,” she says when she looks back. She coughs again, and it sets off the burn in her throat again. God _damn_.

Jester’s face tugs at whatever expression Beau is making. Dropping the phone faster than Beau’s ever seen her do so, she hops to her feet to fluff Beau’s pillows and prop them up. Beau gives her a grateful look as she sits up.

“I said I’d take care of you, didn’t I?” murmurs Jester. “How do you feel?”

Beau rolls the question around in her head, pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth and squinting as she thinks of a few suitable words. The cloud over her thoughts is making them even less organized than usual, so it takes her a long moment (during which Jester is uncharacteristically patient, looking at Beau with an unreadable but wide-eyed expression) to decide on, “Shitty. My throat is on fucking fire.”

“I’m sorry.” Jester sticks out her lower lip and presses the back of her hand against Beau’s forehead, immediately jerking back. “It’s not the only thing. Do you have a thermometer?”

“Don’t think so. If I do, I dunno where.” Beau rubs the sides of her neck—it doesn’t do anything to ease the discomfort, located entirely inside her throat, and in fact sets off a new kind of discomfort when she grazes her lymph nodes, but it’d been worth a shot. “Also, aren’t you, like, really cold all the time? ‘Cause I don’t _feel_ warm.” She’s still freezing, in fact, the chill still bone-deep.

“No, you feel suuuper warm, like way warmer than humans usually do,” says Jester with a frown. “Lucky for you, I always carry a first aid kit in my purse, and it has a thermometer in it.”

She spins on her heel—Beau glances down to see she’s taken off her actual heels and is now just in her tights and the rest of her outfit—and turns to rummage around in her purse, which is lying by the chair. Beau leans back against her pillows and shuts her eyes for less than a minute before Jester pops back up with an _aha!_ and unidentified clattering sounds. The first aid kit, Beau guesses, but she doesn’t open her eyes to verify.

“I can’t believe I thought you were a robber,” she mutters. “You’re so noisy.”

“I wouldn’t rob you, Beau, you’re my best friend,” says Jester, sounding genuinely hurt. More clattering sounds. “Now say _ahh_ , please.”

Not for the first time, Beau thinks about what a good doctor Jester is going to make while she complies and sticks her tongue out. Jester unceremoniously shoves the thermometer under her tongue.

“A little warning next time,” complains Beau, muffled and almost unintelligible around the thermometer. She’s torn between yelping and coughing and ultimately holds back both.

Okay, maybe Jester won’t be the _best_ doctor, with her lack of bedside manner (not that Beau has much room to speak in that department), but still a decent one.

Jester doesn’t reply, but Beau thinks she’s sticking her tongue out. When the thermometer beeps, Beau pops her mouth—and eyes—back open and Jester slides the thermometer out. She examines it with a small but still present frown.

“Well, you don’t have a fever, but you’re still warmer than you should probably be, so we’ll keep an eye on that. And by we, I mean me.” Beau makes a noise of acknowledgment. “Oh, and you should take these,” adds Jester, holding out two round tablets she’s apparently drawn out of thin air. “They’re dissolvable, so I’ll go get you a glass of water, okay?”

“Wait—Jester,” says Beau, grabbing Jester’s wrist before she can flounce away. It takes most of her usually decent strength. Then again, she’s seen Jester’s biceps (and spent hours upon hours trying and failing not to think about them, but that’s irrelevant), so it might have been a struggle even if she weren’t sick. Beau can’t get her voice to work now that she’s thought of Jester’s strength, so she just fixes her with a silent look that she hopes gets the message of _What the fuck are you giving me_ across well enough.

Apparently so, because Jester smiles and says, “Oh, it’s got acetaminophen in it, so it’s basically Tylenol.” Beau’s eyes narrow. “It’ll help with your cold, especially your throat. Do you trust me?”

Beau opens and shuts her mouth. Then she glances away with a self-explanatory flush and small smile; she catches Jester’s grin out of the corner of her eye before Jester is skipping out of the room. Beau is alone for only a short period of time—three or four minutes, at most—before Jester skips back in with a small glass of water in hand.

“Your kitchen is so messy, Beau,” she says as she shakes it. “How do you find anything?”

Beau scowls. “Hey, I’ve seen _your_ kitchen.”

“I have a system,” says Jester, puffing out her cheeks. “Do you?”

Even if Jester is bullshitting her about the system, touché. Beau coughs, regrets it when she goes into another fifteen-second fit of sputtering and wheezing, and then takes the water from Jester with a quiet, “Thanks” that also serves as a silent _drop the kitchen_. As Jester smiles, Beau tips the glass back like a shot. Bad decision—it’s big enough that she ends up with more water on her face than mouth.

Jester takes the glass away while Beau swallows. “Little sips,” she says sweetly, holding Beau’s chin and tipping the glass back for her.

It’s beyond embarrassing, but Beau obliges. She gets used to the taste after the third sip but still doesn’t love it. The clouds don’t burst open to reveal a chorus of angels singing “Hallelujah,” but Beau also doesn’t double over in twice the pain she’d been in already, so it must be fine.

Jester smiles and plucks the empty glass from Beau’s hand to set it down on the nightstand. It’ll leave a rim of water when either of them picks it up again. Beau finds that she doesn’t actually care.

“Do you have any other medicine to force feed me?”

“Nope, let’s see how this works out first,” says Jester, smoothing a few loose locks of Beau’s hair back and tugging on her topknot. It takes Beau a second to realize she’s guiding her back to rest on the pillows, and she goes willingly.

She’s just shut her eyes when there’s a tug near her gut, and Beau fights a groan as her eyes open again, settling on the wall instead of Jester’s face. “Jester,” she says.

Jester perks up. “Yes? Do you need me to get something for you? Oh, do you want anything to eat, since we didn’t get breakfast? A popsicle or something, maybe? Those can feel really nice when you have a sore throat—”

“No, I—” Beau winces, chancing a look over. “I have to pee.”

Silence. Jester’s expression doesn’t even falter.

“Do you want me to walk you to the bathroom?” she says after a beat, frowning. “I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself, Beau—”

“Oh my _God_.” Beau flips the blankets off herself and fights a shiver as she swings her legs over the edge of the bed. Jester is eyeing her warily, but she manages to stand without breaking anything either in the room or her own body, even if she has to steady herself on the edge of the nightstand. “I’ll be fine. I’ve just gotta piss, it’s not like I’m walking barefoot uphill in the snow.”

“Okay,” says Jester, not sounding convinced. She watches Beau hobble toward the bathroom, having to catch herself on walls and furniture all the way. Just when Beau’s hand has closed over the doorknob and she thinks she’s safe, Jester calls, “If you fall, just yell really loudly and I’ll come rescue you!”

Beau clutches the doorknob like a lifeline. So close, yet so far. “What if my fucking pants are off, Jes?”

“I don’t care,” says Jester affably. “What are best friends for, right? It’s not like your junk isn’t anything I haven’t seen before, at least in theory—”

Instead of replying (though maybe this is a reply in and of itself), Beau slips into the bathroom and locks the door with finality. If she’s really determined, Jester can unlock it, anyway. Beau leans against the door with a sigh. At least she’s not cold anymore, she thinks as she glances at her flushed face in the mirror—not a common thing with her, given her skin tone, and noticing it makes the blush deepen. She stumbles forward to press her forehead to the mirror.

 _From every other part of me,_ she thinks, glaring at her reflection, _fuck you, immune system._

Her immune system, thankfully, doesn’t respond. Her bladder does by moving closer and closer to exploding, and Beau hurries away from the mirror.

+

The next time Beau wakes, it’s dark out and there’s an embarrassing amount of drool on her pillow. She tries to wipe it off before Jester, who’s engrossed in her phone again (or still), can notice, but as Beau’s scrubbing at the spittle with her wrist, only spreading it across her pillow, Jester lifts her head.

“Morning,” deadpans Beau, voice hoarser than she’d like.

“Hi,” says Jester, abandoning her phone in favor of leaning closer. “Your drooling was very cute, really.”

Beau considers letting the warmth now encompassing her face take over her entire body. Would that make her spontaneously combust? She hopes so. She flops over so she’s not making contact with the drool on her pillow—hers or not, it’s still gross—and wipes her mouth.

“It’s normal,” insists Jester, pouting. Beau isn’t looking up at her, she can just tell. “It’s caused by saliva buildup normally, and you swallow less both when you’re sick and when you’re sleeping, so those combined lead to, well, all that drool. Completely natural.”

“Still nasty.”

“Hm, maybe a little.” Jester props her chin up with a hand, observing Beau in a way that makes her feel put on the spot, even though Jester’s not even asking anything. Her gaze is just… soft and gentle and caring, almost adoring, and Beau melts under it. Jester snaps herself out of it after a moment, straightening with a concerned smile. “Oh, are you hungry? You didn’t eat earlier, and it’s almost seven, so—”

As if on cue, Beau’s stomach growls. A beat, then they both laugh, Beau’s followed up by another series of short coughs. Jester pats her head.

“I hope you have stuff for soup somewhere,” she says.

Beau’s eyes shift to the side. “Uh…” Jester’s been in her kitchen—today, even—so she _should_ know the general bleak state of things, even if she hadn’t examined Beau’s cabinets in detail. “Probably not, sorry. Soup sounds great as hell, though.”

Jester’s cooked for her plenty before, but mostly sweets, and never soup. Beau’s mouth waters at the thought of a bowl of hot and sour soup like her mother used to make—when her mother still made her things, that is. She drags her wrist across her mouth and remembers to swallow, even if it still makes her throat hurt.

Jester strokes her chin. “Okay,” she says, sounding more like she’s talking to herself than Beau, “I can work with this. Does any specific kind of soup sound good?”

“Hot and sour soup,” she says immediately. Now that the thought’s in her head, it’s never going to leave until she can eat some.

“I don’t know how to make that.” A cute little wrinkle forms between Jester’s eyebrows. Beau’s about to suggest something else—chicken noodle, maybe, because that’s always good—but then Jester’s face brightens. “But I can learn! Do you have a recipe?”

“Have you met me?” returns Beau.

Jester considers this, then shrugs with a mildly apologetic look.

Beau rubs the warming back of her neck, unsure if the flush is from the fever or, well, something else. Maybe a combination. “But there’s probably tons of them online, or something, because it’s pretty popular. Or you could just call in takeout at the Chinese place down the street—”

“No,” says Jester, nostrils flaring. She seems to realize how sharp her tone is and hurries to add, “I’m sure the Chinese place is very good, but it won’t be as good as my cooking!”

“Prove it,” Beau hears herself say. She doesn’t _feel_ herself say it, though, just a tiny rumble in her dry throat, which is a bad sign that she’s electing to ignore. When Jester doesn’t respond, she lifts her lidded gaze to find Jester’s face screwed up in concentration as she jabs at her phone, visibly having to backspace every few letters with her enthusiasm. With some difficulty, Beau props herself up on her elbows. “Hey, you don’t have to cook for me, y’know. I really will be fine with takeout.”

“But I _want_ to cook for you,” says Jester without looking up, expression twisting further. “You’re my—” a split second of hesitation, so short Beau chalks it up to her sick brain distorting her perception of time or some shit “—my friend, and you’re sick and hungry. And I like cooking, especially new things.”

Beau opens and then shuts her mouth as Jester continues typing, nails clicking against her screen. “Okay,” she acquiesces. “You’re a really good chef, so I bet it’ll be lots better than the Chinese place. I don’t think anyone Chinese even works there.”

Jester grins, then her eyes widen at something on her phone. “Oh, this recipe looks good! Does it sound good to you, too?” she says, proceeding to list off the ingredients.

Beau knows fuck all about the actual work that had gone into her old favorite soup; to her child mind, especially under the influence of whatever illness she’d contracted at the time, it had been as simple as _there wasn’t soup before, but now there’s soup and that’s all that matters_. But the ingredients Jester rattles off, even the multitude of optional vegetables, sound delicious enough that her stomach gives another feeble grumble. Jester pauses to catch her breath. It takes Beau, still thinking about the soup and drooling a little again, a second to remember the question.

“Sounds fuckin’ incredible,” she says; then, in a sheepish mumble, “I for sure don’t have any of that in my kitchen, though, so—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll go to the store and pick everything up.” Jester stands with a flourish, dusting imaginary dust off her skirt. She leans over Beau and reaches down to smooth back the sweat-slick strands that have come loose from her messy topknot, which she’s maintained this whole time out of sheer power of will. Beau shivers at the proximity, trying not to breathe directly into Jester’s face. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You should try and rest some more.”

Beau’s eyes are already closing. She hopes she’s not leaning in—that would be embarrassing. (Not that she’s not already been thoroughly embarrassed by Jester playing nurse.) “Sure, Jes.”

Lips brush her forehead, gone so quick that Beau thinks the sensation is imagined even as her eyes fly open to find Jester, a faint blush high in her cheeks, leaning away from her. “Be back soon,” she says again, patting Beau’s flaming cheeks.

Beau mumbles a response that’s incoherent even to her. As soon as she hears the floorboards in the hall creak under Jester’s weight, she rolls over and buries her face in her pillow with a muffled groan.

She’s not sure whether she actually manages to doze off or not, but a short period of time later, she jerks up at the sound of her door being unlocked. Once she hears the unmistakable sounds of Jester shuffling around and mumbling _shit fuck balls_ as she presumably drops or otherwise mishandles the groceries, Beau relaxes. She rolls onto her back and studies the popcorn ceiling while she waits.

Another few sounds, concerning but not enough so that Beau gathers the sudden strength to get up like a woman lifting a car off her girlfriend (not that Jester, of course, is her girlfriend—it’s just an example, okay, a _metaphor_ , but Beau’s never been good at those), become white noise. They travel from the vague direction of the living room to the kitchen, then fade out approximately five seconds before Jester appears in the doorway.

“I’m home,” she chirps, and Beau’s heart does _not_ skip a couple of beats. Jester grins at her, toothy and lopsided. “I got all the stuff I needed for the soup, so I’ll go back out there in a sec to make it, but I wanted to check in on you first. Did you sleep? Are you feeling better now?”

“Not sure if I actually slept or just rested my eyes, but maybe a little.” Beau stretches her neck, producing a long crunching sound. To avoid Jester’s worried yet intrigued look, she coughs into her fist, which rapidly turns into a real cough that produces a wince-worthy amount of clear liquid across her knuckles. At least it isn’t blood. See, she’s staying positive!

Jester’s smile widens. “That’s good,” she says, turning to leave.

“Hey,” says Beau, stopping her mid-step as she turns her head back with a hum. Beau rubs the side of her neck. “Thanks for making me soup.”

The rest—thanks for all of this—is unspoken, and Beau doesn’t know if it’s obvious enough in her tone that Jester will hear it without her needing to say it (she’ll force the words out at some point before she gets better or immediately after she does, she’s sure, but that’s the nebulous future, so she won’t worry about it now). Regardless, the quiet words make Jester smile.

“I should thank you for giving me the opportunity to make soup,” she says, blushing faintly. The peaceful quiet hangs between them for a moment. “Well, I’ll go make it now. Rest up, okay?”

“Okay,” says Beau, the ghost of Jester’s lips, real or not, still lingering on her forehead as she sinks back into the sheets.

However long it takes to make hot and sour soup later, Beau’s eyes crack back open when a familiar smell wafts into her bedroom. They snap wide open the second she hears hoof-steps and distant sloshing. She sits up as Jester, humming “Lollipop” under her breath, returns with a bowl wrapped in a towel, presumably both to limit the mess and provide a barrier for the heat, which is evident in the steam curling up off the bowl. Jester sets the bowl down in her lap. While Beau rearranges herself, thankful for the towel when the heat still radiates through her blankets, Jester drags the chair closer to the bed and flips it around to sit backwards on it.

“I hope it tastes good,” she says, resting her chin on the back of the chair and leaning forward to watch. It’s slightly unnerving, but she also looks adorable, so Beau can live with it. She takes a sip—

And, at once, spits it back out. She would be more embarrassed if her mouth weren’t on fire, which makes it difficult to think properly. “Ack! Shit, that’s hot—”

Jester bursts out in giggles. “It’s _hot_ and sour soup, silly,” she says, absentmindedly patting Beau’s shoulder as she sticks her tongue out, “what’d you expect?”

Beau settles for stirring the soup and blowing on it instead, waiting for some of the steam to dissipate. When she braves another sip, it’s gone down in temperature so it’s warm enough that it still tastes good and stings slightly, but not so hot it burns. She swallows the first sip, letting the tense silence weigh before she chokes out, “Oh my God, Jes, this is so fucking good,” and starts trying to inhale the soup. Spoonful after spoonful disappears down her gullet. Around the fifth swallow, Beau glances over to find an impressed look on Jester’s face. She grins and dives back into it.

As Beau’s slurping up soup like a vacuum and not a human being, Jester makes a noise of surprise. Beau lifts her head, making a noise of vague question—it’s the best she can do with her spoon still stuffed in her mouth.

“Kiwami Japan posted a new video,” says Jester. “Do you want to watch it?”

Beau straightens, almost spitting out the current mouthful of soup in her excitement. She’d happened upon the channel something like two years ago, trying to distract herself from midterms and being immediately enthralled by the knife-making process. She hadn’t known Jester was subscribed, too. She swallows, then says, “Yeah, sure.”

Jester grins, already getting up. “Okay, make room.”

Beau startles. She has to cradle her soup in a way that doesn’t let it spill as she slides to the side to leave room for Jester beside her in the twin-size bed. It’s a tight fit, but they make it work, and—

And it’s nice, sitting here eating soup like her mother used to make but a million times better, if only because of who made it, and cuddling up next to Jester to watch a faceless Japanese man make a functional knife out of bread. Beau has to cough every few minutes and only remembers to tilt her face into her elbow or hand a third of the time. She keeps forgetting to swallow, making spit and soup alike fall out of her mouth (and sometimes onto Jester). Jester’s legs, soft as they are, dig into hers—not painful yet, but Beau suspects it will be after a while. The way their bodies fit together isn’t close to comfortable; rather than melding together like puzzle pieces, they press up against each other in awkward ways, never becoming one person but remaining indubitably separate shapes that keep bumping together and muttering half-hearted apologies, lost under the tinny noise from Jester’s phone’s speakers. The closeness makes Beau’s face flush so much that Jester, looking up, asks to take her temperature again. (Still warm, but still not a fever.) It’s cramped and almost too warm and hurts a little.

It’s perfect, and Beau couldn’t ask for much more.

+

Beau hurts when she wakes up, but not the full-body aches she’d grown accustomed to yesterday. It’s something she hasn’t experienced in some time, not since she’d realized she’d fallen in love, but something she’s not completely unfamiliar with—the discomfort of sharing a bed with someone she’s not used to sharing with.

 _Is_ she used to sharing with Jester, though? she wonders as she blinks away the blinding light seeping in through the blinds. She doesn’t remember sharing a bed with her before, and that doesn’t seem like something she’d forget. It probably happened at one point in college, early in their days as roommates, given Jester’s general clinginess and Beau’s occasional loneliness—a side of her, looking back, she’s pretty sure only Jester’s seen. If it had, though, it’s been long enough that their shapes have grown unfamiliar and uncomfortable when mashed together.

Her and Jester’s limbs have tangled together at some point, Jester’s hooves digging into Beau’s legs and one arm flung around Beau’s waist, the other linked with hers like they’re walking together. Beau looks up to find Jester’s horn dangerously close to her face. She swallows, glad she hadn’t been gored in her sleep, and lets her gaze travel further to Jester’s face.

She’s still asleep, heaving faint and measured breaths, and her long eyelashes flutter with each exhale. Her hair fans across the pillow, unkempt but looking as soft as ever. She hadn’t taken it out of the half-up and half-down bun it was arranged into before sleeping, probably because they hadn’t planned to fall asleep like this (or at least Beau hadn’t, barely able to put her empty soup bowl up on the nightstand before she passed out), and the bun is smooshed by the position she’s in. Even with her limbs sprawled out, jutting into Beau’s, and her hair a mess and a small trickle of drool coming from the edge of her parted mouth, she’s beautiful. Not perfect, but beautiful—perhaps _because_ she’s not perfect.

Beau turns away before Jester wakes up and heckles her for staring while she was asleep, but she can’t help a tiny smile.

Halfway to the bathroom, Beau’s body remembers that she’s sick. She sniffles as her actual body aches return, doubling her over, and surges forward to clutch the door frame for support. Behind her, the sheets rustle.

“Mm… Beau?” Jester yawns. “Where’d you—what’re you—oh, Beau, are you okay?”

Beau turns her head halfway to meet Jester’s eyes, which are wide even though she’s in the process of rubbing the crust out of one corner. “Yeah, I just—uh—hurt.”

“Here, I’ll help you,” says Jester, already climbing out of bed.

Beau stutters out a protest of some kind, but she can’t deny that wrapping an arm around Jester’s shoulder and letting her support her is nice. Jester helps Beau the rest of the way into the bedroom. As she flicks on the light—if Beau hadn’t been fully awake before, the flood of bright light brings her there—Beau leans against the sink.

Jester turns back to her. “Do you need help with anything else?” she asks, voice sweet and gentle and still a little rough from sleep.

“Nah, I think I’m good now.” Beau’s fingers dig into the edge of the sink. Her body still aches, but more manageably now that she’s managed to move against it. “Just took me by surprise.”

Jester squeezes her shoulder. “Okay. Just call me if you need me, though, okay?” she adds, offering Beau a sleepy smile before she yawns again.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Beau, rolling her eyes but unable to help a grin.

Before she leaves, Jester leans up to press a casual kiss into Beau’s cheek like that’s a thing they _do_ , making Beau’s entire face tingle as she stares in shock as Jester’s already disappearing shape. The door clicks shut before Beau can even say a word.

She doesn’t want glaring at the mirror over the Jester-caused butterflies in her stomach to become a Thing, so Beau resists the urge and just moves on to do her business.

+

They don’t mention the cheek kiss when Beau goes back to bed to find Jester in the chair—which seems to have crept even closer to the bed—again, and Beau doesn’t bother asking if Jester even remembers it because she’s already dozing off again, neck bent awkwardly. Later, though, Jester brings Beau breakfast in bed: simple toast and juice with another couple of tablets, despite her offers to bring Beau a smorgasbord. Beau could get used to this domestic routing of her eating while Jester scrolls through her phone in the chair beside the bed.

After breakfast, Beau finds her own phone on the nightstand and thumbs through Twitter with the occasional _huh_ or _ew_ or _hey, Jes, look at this_. This, however, isn’t the habit that’s getting on Jester’s nerves.

“Stop _sniffing_ ,” she says the nth time Beau tries in vain to clear the gross full feeling in her nostrils. Her throat pain has dwindled, waning and waxing over the course of the past few hours, but her nose is back to being tight and aflame. “It’ll make the postnasal drip worse.”

“But my nose is stuffy,” whines Beau.

Jester procures an entire box of Kleenex out of God knows where. “Then blow it.”

“But there’s nothing in it to blow.”

Jester’s brows knit together in either frustration or confusion, but she covers it with a smile far more magnanimous than, Beau has to admit, she deserves right now. “Fine,” she says. “I will be nice to you because you’re sick, Beau, but you’re being a really annoying patient.”

Keeping herself from pulling a face, Beau takes the box of Kleenex. She blows her nose just to prove a point, then presents the empty tissue to Jester with the blankest expression she can muster. Jester’s eye twitches.

They lapse into an abrupt but not uncomfortable silence, Jester probably having to restrain herself from telling Beau to cut it out and Beau not having much more to say. Another half-hour passes, during which the guilt that’s been gnawing at Beau resurfaces. She tries—and fails—to shove it down. When it doesn’t go away at her feeble attempts to compartmentalize and procrastinate (very possibly the same thing, in Beau’s mind at least), she tosses aside her phone and clears her throat.

“Hey,” she says, stretching to take Jester’s hand. Jester makes a surprised but pleased sound, a tiny gasp that Beau wants to record and play on repeat, and squeezes Beau’s hand back. Beau resists the urge to bury her reddening face in the pillows. “I don’t think I’ve really, uh, thanked you yet. So thank you. For, y’know, taking care of me. And stuff. Even though I’ve been—” She wrinkles her nose. “Difficult,” she admits.

Jester blinks before beaming and saying, “Of course, Beau.” Her smile falls a little flat, if only because her eyes have blown wide in a way that makes Beau’s narrow. “Like I said, we’re best friends, right? So it would be silly if I didn’t take care of you.”

“Is that—” Beau hesitates. “Is that the only reason?”

Jester tenses. “Yes,” she says, cheerful, but then she shakes her head, hand tightening on Beau’s. She coughs—worry dashes through Beau for a second before she realizes it’s dry, not like any of Beau’s coughing fits, and probably fake—and adds in a near whisper, “I love you, Beau.”

Butterflies flutter in Beau’s stomach. “Love you too, Jes.”

“But not the same way I love you.”

“I—what?” Beau forces herself into a sitting position, hand falling from Jester’s. Jester is chewing her lip, face flushed as she avoids Beau’s eyes for what has to be the first time ever—Beau’s the one out of them who does that more often than not. Beau’s brows scrunch as she considers the picture before her. She’s decent at reading people by now, but still not _great_ , and she can’t read Jester’s current body language at all. “What way do you love me?” she hears herself say, voice very small.

It takes Jester a long moment to answer, fingers toying with one of the ribbons tied around her horns. “I’m _in_ love with you, Beau.”

Beau’s heart stutters. She opens her mouth, ready to contradict every doubt that’s hovering in Jester’s face and voice right now, but Jester resumes talking before she can get out a single word.

“I—I just realized not that long ago,” she says, fidgeting increasing. “I didn’t even completely realize I liked girls before, but now that I have, I—” She shakes her head with a giggle; it sounds vaguely like one of Jester’s regular giggles, but as though twisted, devoid of the usual volume and genuine joy. “I’ve loved you for a really long time, I think.”

Beau stares, mouth agape. Her mind is still mostly bogged down by the cold, and she’d be thrown by the confession any other time, so she’s trying with all her might to piece her thoughts (which are pretty much all _!!!!!!!!!!_ ) into something comprehensive enough to translate into spoken words. She shuts her mouth as she considers her words, then opens it again, but Jester’s already moving, standing and smoothing down her skirt. _Wait,_ Beau wants to yell, but the word won’t unstick itself from her throat—

“Well, if you keep taking the cold medicine and those dissolvable tablets, you should be good in no time,” Jester says cheerfully, face pinched into a stiff smile. “You’re already doing a lot better! Oh, and there’s some leftover soup in the fridge if you want any of that. We can—” She falters. “We can talk later, but for now, I think I need to—”

Beau’s mouth finally catches up to her brain. “Wait!”

She flings herself out of bed, trying to kick the blankets out from underneath and around her and tripping over them in the process, getting herself more and more tangled as she tries to extract herself from the mess of fabric. _Screw it,_ she thinks, _Jester’s seen you worse_. Beau takes the blankets with her to stand like a weird bedding-draped zombie in the middle of her bedroom. Jester has stopped, though, staring at her with wide eyes, and that’s enough.

“Jester,” she says, only slightly out of breath. Dammit, she’d wanted to be cooler when she said this. “Jes, I love you too.”

Jester blinks hard enough that Beau realizes she’s blinking back tears. “I know, but—”

“No, no, Jes, I love your voice, but let me finish, okay?” Jester’s jaw snaps closed as she nods, transfixed. Beau takes a deep breath. Several strategies flicker through her mind—reciting poetry (yuck, and also she doesn’t know any off the top of her head), sweeping Jester off her feet and into her own arms (impossible in her current physical state), using a terrible pickup line (may she reiterate: _yuck_ ). Beau’s bluntness has benefited her in the past, rare as that occasion may have been, and she decides it can’t hurt her now. “I love you too, Jes. I’m—I’m in love with you too, I mean. I love you the same way you love me.”

The world stops for just an instant as they stare at each other, Jester’s face frozen and Beau’s expression less delighted and more sweaty than it had been in all her fantasies of this moment. Then the blush already on Jester’s face blossoms into something wider. Her smile tips up at the corners to bare a hint of fangs.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Oh. Beau, you—” The dreamy look clears from her eyes as she seems to catch up to the situation, and her eyes widen further when she processes how Beau looks. “You look like you’re going to fall over, you should be back in bed! Come on, let me—”

Beau tells herself that she _lets_ Jester maneuver her back into bed, but in all honesty, even if Beau weren’t willing, Jester could’ve anyway. Beau might be into that, she realizes. Still a little giddy, she doesn’t complain as Jester tucks her back in beneath an untangled cocoon of blankets. Beau feels like a burrito.

Jester, with a considering look and her lower lip between her teeth, starts to lean down. It takes Beau until their noses are almost brushing to realize what’s happening.

“Whoa, wait, don’t kiss me,” she blurts, trying to lift her hands before she realizes she’d have to remove them from her blanket burrito first. Fuck, that’s something she never thought she’d say. At how Jester’s face falls, guilt ties itself a knot in her stomach. “No, shit, that didn’t come out right. I mean—I _want_ to kiss you. But I don’t want you to get sick.”

It takes about five seconds for the disappointment to remove itself from Jester’s face, replaced by a sunny smile, off of which undeniable love and affection are radiating. Beau finds herself both wanting to bask in it and shield her eyes.

“Aw, Beau, you really do care,” says Jester. “But I’ve already been spending, like, a _lot_ of time around you, so I’ll probably get sick anyway, right? And—” She laughs nervously. “I mean, I accidentally kissed you twice already, just not on the lips, but disease travels fast through the air anyway, and you don’t cover your mouth when you cough very often—”

“Hey.”

“So the cold is probably in the incubation stage in me now in the first place,” continues Jester, ignoring Beau’s interjection. “But my immune system is really good, too, so maybe I won’t get sick at all!” She punctuates this with jazz hands. “I’m a med student, Beau, trust me.”

She leans in close enough that their noses are brushing again. Her cool, minty breath blows across the lower half of Beau’s face, and Beau sucks in a sharp breath, trying not to exhale.

“Of course I trust you,” she says, shutting her eyes so she’s not tempted to surge up and close the very small distance between their lips. It _worsens_ the urge. She opens them again, but avoids eye contact. “More than anyone else,” she adds in a mumble.

Jester gasps. “That’s _so sweet_ , Beau. I trust you more than anyone else too! We-ell, except maybe my mama or The Traveler, but those are givens.” A brief pause. “Now will you let me kiss you please?”

Beau’s own patience is wearing thin, eyelids fluttering shut again as she subconsciously tilts her face closer to Jester’s, and she’s never been good at saying no to Jester.

She leans up and kisses her.

+

(Four days later…

“Beau, being sick _suuuuucks_.”

Beau hums in acknowledgment but doesn’t look up from her phone. Jester has much nicer chairs in her apartment than Beau does in her own, so she lives in this chair now. Jester blows her nose with a frankly disgusting _honk_ —but it’s nothing Beau hasn’t become accustomed to in the past week or so, between her and Jester. What a pair they are.

Jester groans again, kicking at the several blankets that have already been pushed around her waist. “How did you do it?” she demands.

Beau, still without looking up from her phone, leans over to kiss Jester’s cheek. She almost recoils at how warm it is but covers the flinch with a smile, refusing to look up to tell if Jester believes it or not. “I had a really good nurse.”

“Aww—”

“And also I was unconscious most of the time.”

Beau glances up to see Jester pull a face; she’s blowing her nose again too fast for Beau to tell if it’s because of the exchange or her general discontent right now. “That was almost so sweet,” she says, muffled by the tissue.

“Don’t worry, babe, you’re sweet enough for the both of us.” Beau takes a second to smile dopily at Jester’s satisfied expression before she notices a notification on her phone. “Oh, hey, new Kiwami Japan video. Wanna watch it with me?”

Jester is already scooting over to make room for her on the bed.)

**Author's Note:**

> while sick i also watched a lot of kiwami japan videos, which i think beau would really like. the only good youtuber, truly
> 
> thanks so much for reading!! i greatly appreciate all comments & kudos <33
> 
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